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Puerto 80 v. US

EFF urged a federal court to return two domain names seized in the U.S. government's fundamentally flawed anti-infringement campaign.

EFF's amicus brief was filed in support of a petition from Puerto 80, the Spanish company behind popular sports streaming sites Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org, which were both seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier this year, even though a Spanish court found they did not violate copyright law. Puerto 80 tried to work with ICE and other U.S. government authorities to resolve the matter without court involvement, but its efforts were unsuccessful.

ICE began seizing domain names last year as part of "Operation in Our Sites," a government initiative to crack down on Internet piracy. ICE has seized 125 domains and redirects visitors of those sites to a banner notifying them that the domain name of that website has been seized by federal authorities.

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San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal appeals court in an amicus brief today to order the return of two domain names seized by the U.S. government in violation of the First Amendment. The domain names -- Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org, owned by Spanish company Puerto 80...